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This is not a standard style episode, as we're interviewing Robert W. Gibson, a longtime anime fan who was there in the foundational era of US anime fandom. Part 1 is available at Tim Eldred's Cosmo DNA website. Visit www.animeworldorder.com for full show notes and supplemental links.

Demographics

goo Rankings seems to have switched permanently to a different research company, iBRIDGE’s Research Plus, where between the 10th and 14th of July 2014 500 members of their monitor group completed a private internet-based questionnaire. The sample was split 50:50 male and female, but no further demographics were given. This question was for the males only.

As I suspected, the choices for body bits for men to be interested in were perhaps too limited to make an interesting survey. I must admit my own weakness for yukata, so here’s a random shot from Flickr:

Despite the fact that Clarissa is in the middle of moving and Gerald is in the middle of helping Clarissa move, it was decided that the computers and microphones shouldn't be packed up just yet, since Gerald's got an Otakon report due. Visit www.animeworldorder.com for full show notes and supplemental links.

Seriously? We missed the entire month of June yet still say this thing is
updated weekly? No matter, what?s done is done. Or rather, what?s not done is
done. For this episode, Gerald reviews the classic 1980s Sunrise mecha series
Giant Gorg. Visit www.animeworldorder.com for full show notes and supplemental
links.

Drink #054: Garden State JulepAnimeNEXT 2014

This time on The Speakeasy we have illustrious guests to help us talk about the AnimeNEXT weekend. Vinnie from All Geeks Considered and panel coordinator of AnimeNEXT joins us along with Gerald and Daryl from Anime World Order who were guest panelists at the convention.

In a Collins glass, gently muddle mint with lemon syrup to release oils. Add Applejack and rosé, stir to combine. Fill glass half-way with crushed ice, add salt and stir again. Top with more crushed ice to mound over top. Garnish with mint sprigs, red berries and a lemon wheel.

… or, as some prefer to call it, The Madness of Clements & McCarthy III…

Here is is, in all its gilded glory – or rather, here it will be at the end of 2014, just in time for your Christmas gift list. The weight is now so daunting that there’s an e-book version – we don’t want to give delivery staff all over the world back strain just before the holiday.

And yes, pedants everywhere, we know that so far the origins of anime can’t be conclusively dated before 1917. We were two consistent voices arguing for conservative, securely documented dating during that brief period when the discovery of the Matsumoto fragment led some to posit a date before 1907 for the first animation made in Japan. But “a century” is a fair subtitle tag for an industry that’s been around for at least 97 years.

A lot has changed in the anime world since the second edition. A lot has stayed the same, too.

This edition will have its serious, thoughtful critics. My co-author and I, and our publisher, like them a lot. They offer us alternative points of view. They challenge us to argue opinions with others who know what we’re about and care about it as much as we do. They pick up stray typos and factual errors and point them out so they can be corrected. They’re amazing, and it’s gratifying to see so many of them dotted all over the globe.

This edition will also have its share of critical poseurs who self-define as too well-informed and up with the latest thing to need it. There were a few of those around for the first two editions as well. A number of websites will probably have a few untrumpeted changes after this “completely unnecessary” volume appears, because that’s what happened after our last two editions. (This happens with most reputable anime books. When it comes to being both a target and a goldmine for carpers, no researcher is alone.)

The Anime Encyclopedia has become part of the critical and scholarly landscape of anime. I won’t list all its “firsts” because blowing your own trumpet is a waste of breath, but I’m proud of it and I still care enough about it to spend hours trawling Japanese websites stretching my pidgin Japanese round vocabulary no polite old lady will ever be expected to use and imagery I’ve seen a million times before but that never fails to make me feel a little bit sad and soiled. (Why do so many apparently normal men despise the female half of the human race so much?)

I also see hidden gems, lost fragments of history, unsung beauty I want to share with the world. When you go mining, you accept that most of the time you’ll be moving dirt; but every now and then, you find a diamond.

So if, reading the new edition, you discover a hitherto unknown treasure, let us know. And if you know of a treasure we’ve missed, let us know that too.

Shirow Miwa, known his work on the manga Dogs and with the band Supercell, has been letting his appreciation for Pacific Rim since this summer. Now, he's gone all out with a preview of the stunned art he's done for a Winter Comiket tribute to the mecha versus kaiju movie.

Here's the second of three parts of our answers to Anime82's questions. We may have a separate episode before posting the third part. Or not. Visit www.animeworldorder.com for full show notes and supplemental links.

Here's the second of three parts of our answers to Anime82's questions. We may have a separate episode before posting the third part. Or not. Visit www.animeworldorder.com for full show notes and supplemental links.

The internet is filled with sequentially numbered, attention-getting listsicles all claiming to be the authoritative judgment on the top fifteen party schools to visit after you master your five best workouts or the twenty-five movies you must not fail to see with the ten people you meet when you die. And here at Let’s Anime we’re just as lame, even though our focus is classic Japanese cartoons. So here’s an exhaustively researched, completely subjective and arbitrary list of the Top Ten Least Essential OVAs That Honestly, You Don’t Need To Watch. You can safely go on about your life without ever having wasted your time watching these 1980s Japanese anime OVAs; other than filling the shelves of neighborhood video rental shops, they are inconsequential in every sense of the word. Some of them are bad, some of them are boring, and others make no sense whatsoever, their only common denominator being their total uselessness. And remember, like every other stupid list you find on the internets, this is completely arbitrary, subject only to the reviewer’s whimsical notions, and may not reflect your personal taste or reality in any way whatsoever.

Headbands are an essential part of your 1980s fashion

Cosmos Pink Shock - 7-21-1986 This one’s a lightweight and knows it, but the great Toshiki “Iczer One” Hiranois here at the height of his powers, giving us the story of Michi, a space leotard girl who blasts across a goofy universe in her ship, the Pink Shock, in pursuit of her boyfriend. It’s got good AIC animation, some gags – not great gags, but gags nonetheless – and cultural references that we didn’t get in the 80s because our knowledge of Japan was limited to Robotech, ninja movies and metal robot toys. It’s the OVA equivalent of a 12” remix by Bananarama or the Mary Jane Girls – a perfect artifact of its time whose greatest virtue is being a perfect artifact of its time.

Dead Heat - 8-7-1987In the future, auto racing is known as ‘FX’ and the drivers don’t drive cars, they drive car-robot hybrid vehicles, and they don’t just race, they grapple with each other as they go around the track. Seems like a lot of mechanical engineering simply to replicate roller derby, but who am I to argue with the future? This Sunrise OVA is of interest mostly to people who for some reason are unable to watch either roller derby or auto racing, and who wonder if our hero Makoto will win the big race so he can take his surprisingly male-looking girlfriend to a love hotel. If you had a dedicated 3D compatible VHD player with 3D glasses, you could watch Dead Heat in thrilling 3D, with the exciting bonus of witnessing an extra character who was only visible in 3D. Legend has it this character holds up a sign marked with the Japanese characters for “sucker”.

Makoto and "girlfriend"

Elf 17 - 1-4-1987 Based on the manga by Atsuji Yamamoto, Elf 17is a cutesy lightweight romp through the galaxy as our title character, the strongest little teenage girl elf in the universe, teams up with the eccentric zillionaire prince Mascot Tyler and the battle-suit otaku K.K. as they battle their way through the pro-wrestling areas of outer space. This airy trifle comes complete with giant walking tanuki statues and a Mitokomon reference, and it completely misrepresents Yamamoto’s manga work, which started off kinda lurid and just got more lurid with time. Later Yamamoto works include “Battle Goddess” and the super bloody, ultra lurid “Arnis In Sword Land.” Yamamoto also provided the story for another completely non-essential OVA, Ultimate Teacher.

Ruu, aka Elf 17, will kick your ass

Phantom Gentleman aka Dream Detective Gentleman (Mugen Shinshi: Boken Katsugeki Hen) - 2-21-1987 Mamiya Mugen is a famous detective, a famous, kinda girly-looking kid detective, who works in a weird retro 1930s Japan. Strange kidnappers target club dancer Atsuko “Akko” Fukune - but Mugen is on the case to protect Tokyo’s exotic dancers! This 49 minute video mixes cutesy character designs with what you’re led to believe is going to be some kind of detective story but instead detours into magical relics, mythical monsters, and Indiana Jones-style adventure, but all the busty dancing girls or archeological destruction can’t help make this inexplicable film any more explicable. If we were Japanese we’d be familiar with the popular Mugen Shinshi manga by Yosuke Takahashi, but his eerily sensual pen line failed utterly to make the transition to this anime.

underage drinkin', underage detectin'

Roots Search - 9-10-1986This one is bad and it should feel bad. Roots Search, aka “Life Devourer X”, is like something a dollar store or a truck stop chain would produce to cash in on what they heard was the exciting new “Japanimation” fad, like something you find hundreds of dumped at a Goodwill for a tax loss; poorly animated, badly designed characters wander through various spaceships having ESP visions and dodging a horrifying vagina dentata alien that murders astronauts. And then it just ends, denying the remaining few viewers any sort of closure. This one is by some of the same people that brought us Crystal Triangle, another really terrible OVA that at least has an ending.

Good Morning Althea - 12-16-1987 This might be the exact point where Japan just gave up and decided to just throw mechanical designs at their OVA projects in the hope that the resulting confusion would resolve itself into some kind of interesting pattern. This is the sort of OVA you watch without subtitles and naturally assume that what’s going on makes sense and is in some way purposeful and of interest, and then later somebody fansubs it and you find out that the pattern your brain attempted to impose upon it actually made more sense than what was originally intended. There’s a spaceship, there are robots, there are people in robots fighting other people in robots from another spaceship. Somebody wakes up.

rise and shine Althea

The Humanoid - 3-5-1986If you spent any time in the 1980s you’ll recognize his work: the shiny airbrush work of Hajime Sorayama appeared on the covers of Playboy and Heavy Metal and on album covers for bands like The Cars and Aerosmith. And if you find the idea of a shiny metal woman interesting enough to support a 40-minute animated video, then The Humanoid is for you! Antoinette, the sexy robot in question, was built by Dr. Watson on the planet Lazeria, which is about to be destroyed by the evil Governor Proud, right when Dr. Watson’s daughter Sheri and her hunky fiancé Alan arrive. Terrible timing! Luckily, this all happens when Antoinette’s sexy robot heart starts to have robot feelings of love, and she uses her sexy robot power to save the day. This 40-minute time-waster has lackluster character designs, cheesy 80s ballads, and an inexplicable obsession with coffee.

Digital Devil Story (Megami Tensei)- 1987 Based on the Japanese horror novel series by Aya Nishitani, this one’s about a student computer genius, who’s also the reincarnation of an ancient Japanese deity, who uses his giant clunky 80s mainframe to summon up some horrifying devils. This involves some not-bad animation of a well-endowed teacher’s frilly brassiere heaving up and down as she becomes the conduit for horrifying monsters from another dimension to invade our world. Then giant piles of red goop start crushing students and a big blue hairy devil named Loki fights our student computer genius hero, who fights back with his reincarnated girlfriend and his magic sword and his pet devil animal throughout several alternate universes. If you want lots of mid 1980s computer technology and lots of scenes of people staring intently at old-fashioned CRT monitors, followed by hairy devils and magic swords, this is the one for you! The Hiroyuki Kitazume character designs aren’t bad, if you’re into that sort of thing. Apparently there are a lot of video games based on this novel, and I suspect they aren’t very essential either.

Chojiku Romanesque Samy – Missing 99 - 7-5-1986 Let’s see, what we have here is your typical everyday story of a typical anime schoolgirl who finds out she actually has amazing mystical powers that not only transport her into an amazing fantasy world but give her amazing super battle armor that doubles as a bikini. Raise your hands if you’ve seen this all before. Can she survive the attack of the reconstructed demon beast warriors in time to reveal her true Bodhisattva nature?

Girls Detective Club (KatsugekiShoujoTanteidan) - 11-25-1986 You’d think that a video starring three high school girls armed with automatic weapons battling an evil girl-genius with a giant flying battleship would be jam packed with the same sort of excitement and flash that made Project A-Ko such a success, but you’d be wrong. This stunningly boring piece of junk – from TMS, shockingly enough - limps from nonsensical setup to nonsensical setup, never explaining who these girls are, why they have a detective club, why one of them lives in a mansion filled with machine guns, or why this was animated in the first place. It feels like a Cream Lemon with all the sex removed, like an episode of Urusei Yatsura without gags, fun characters, or pleasant design, like a half hour of your life without anything productive or fulfilling accomplished. What purpose Girls Detective Club served other than clogging shelves down at Tsutaya Video is a mystery which I suppose we’ll need to hire a Girls Detective Club to solve.

get detecting, you

What’s that? I didn’t mention The Wanna-Bes or Twilight Q or Twinkle Heart or even Twinkle Rock Me Nora? Didn’t see your favorite least essential OVA listed here? Ready to take this to social media and tell the world how Let’s Anime arbitrarily ignored your favorite least essential OVA in its totally subjective list? Sure, why not. Make sure to let us know what YOUR time-wastingest OVA is, or was; maybe we can get another column out of ‘em.

Move over G.I. Joe with your "Kung Fu" grip. After revolutionizing the field, Chara-ani has scheduled a second "New Bust Material" Senran Kagura figure. The busty ninja girl game/anime/manga series' Asuka will be followed by Ikaruga with the two figures coming in December and February respectively.

For a kids cartoon, this was appalling. Not for the content or the violence, but for the highly sexualized nature of the show. All of the main characters are scantily clad, have enormous breasts that are barely covered, and there's an unhealthy obsession with showing shots of the crotch.

One scene that was explicitly outrageous took place in a shower. The key protagonist, Sweet Diva center vocalist, Hagiwara Sakura, is approached by Yuho and Aika as she bathes. They ask her how she got her "bangin' body" and proceed to fondle her breasts against her will. We are then told that her "proportions are the fruits of her hard training", which is an inspiring message to young girls everywhere. After that, Yuho and Aika go and grope Sakura's singing rival, Miyazawa Elena. All of this molestation is played up as comic relief.

The perversion builds in the final battle, the "hair vs hair" match between Hagiwara Sakura and Kazama Rio, where shortly after a fan shouts "bitch" at Rio, she puts Sakura in a gratuitously crotch exposing move called the "Shame Hold", then the commentator says, "A national's idol got her legs spread wide open! This is too good!". Maybe I'm naive to Japanese culture, but I find it hard to believe this is isn't offensive and unsuitable for children anywhere in the world.

Besides all that, I kind of liked the show. It had a complex narrative for a kid's show, starting at the end, then jumping to the beginning. It put over the seriousness of Japanese pro-wrestling and the story was believable, to a degree. The end was pretty good with Sakura demanding a rematch after losing her hair and vowing to go pro.

As well as that, they also teased a few other matches. The first being between Sakura and Elena, who both, in the singing contest, established their signature move called the "ice cream somersault. The second will be with a Crush Girl type called Misaki, who, like Sakura, used to be a singer turned wrestler.

Even though I wouldn't ever show this program to a child, for fear I'd be arrested, I have to give it a "thumbs up", because in spite of the depravity, which I only found perturbing within the context of a kid's cartoon, I enjoyed it and I want to see more episodes.

The mahjong gambling madness of the Akagi anime is the latest addition to Crunchyroll’s library of streaming anime, based on the manga by Nobuyuki Fukumoto, of Kaiji fame. Premium members have access to all episodes as of 5pm PDT today whilefree members will enjoy 6 episodes today while adding 5 episodes/week.

Story synopsis

Tokyo, 1958. Nangou is playing a life and death match of mahjong against the Ryuzaki yakuza clan. If he loses, he must pay his debt through his own life insurance. He is despairing when suddenly a mysterious, 13-year old boy appears. His name is Akagi. Nangou senses a strong aura around the boy and out of desperation, he lets Akagi play for him. Although Akagi has just learned the rules of mahjong, his natural talents are awakened and he defeats the veteran yakuza players. But this legendary night is only the beginning for Akagi, the genius who descended into the darkness...

Akagiis available in the following territories: USA, Canada, United Kingdom, Ireland, South Africa, Australia, New Zealand, the Carribeans, and South/Central America.

Daryl and Gerald recount their experiences attending Otakon 2013 and Gerald reviews a title he saw for the first time at Otakon: Midori - Shoujo Tsubaki, also known as Mr. Arashi's Freak Show. Visit www.animeworldorder.com for full show notes and supplemental links.

A deplorable article by Suzy Cohen on Huffington Post is titled “Feel Bad? It Could Be Lyme Unless Proven Otherwise.” It consists of irresponsible fear-mongering about a nonexistent disease. A science-based article would be titled “Feel Bad? It Couldn’t Be Chronic Lyme Disease Because CLD Is Nonexistent Until Proven Otherwise.”

Cohen says:

People often attribute uncomfortable symptoms to aging, stress, or the “aches and pains of daily living,” especially if blood tests and body scans are normal. What if you have Lyme and don’t know it? If you’ve ever been for a walk in the woods, laid in the grass, live in or visited a Lyme-endemic area, or have a pet cat or dog, you may have exposed yourself to Lyme disease and associated co-infections. There is even the possibility of contracting Lyme if you were born to a mother who has been exposed. Tick born infections can also be transmitted from blood transfusions.

That pretty much covers everyone. Who hasn’t been for a walk in the woods, lain down on the lawn, or had a pet? (And incidentally, are there no editors or proofreaders at HuffPo who realize that the past participle of lie is lain and that infections are tick-borne, not tick born?)

Cohen says:

Lyme is a multi-systemic illness, and may affect every part of the body causing fatigue, stiff neck, headaches, light and sound sensitivity, tinnitus (ringing in the ears), anemia, dizziness, joint and muscle pain, brain fog, tingling, numbness and burning sensations of the extremities, memory and concentration problems, difficulties with sleep (both falling asleep and frequent awakening), chest pain and palpitations and/or psychiatric symptoms like depression and anxiety.

That pretty much covers everyone. Who hasn’t experienced one or more of those symptoms? I’ve personally had 10 of them just in the course of the past week, none significant and none requiring a hypothesis like CLD for explanation. If I wanted to identify myself as “sick” and to believe these symptoms were due to a single underlying cause, it wouldn’t be hard to fit them into the CLD framework.

Cohen interviewed Dr. Richard Horowitz, who claims to have treated more than 12,000(!) patients for chronic Lyme disease and has dubbed it “Lyme-MSIDS” for multiple systemic infectious disease syndrome. He claims that most of his patients have a whole host of associated tick-borne illnesses such as Borrelia hermsii (relapsing fever), Babesia, Bartonella, Mycoplasma, Chlamydia, Rocky Mountain spotted fever, Q-fever, Ehrlichia or Anaplasma. He says that MSIDS

…involves not only the bacterial and parasitic infections mentioned above, but also associated viral and fungal infections, immune issues, inflammation, hormonal disorders, mitochondrial dysfunction (the mitochondria are the part of the cells responsible for energy production), sleep disorders, environmental toxins with heavy metals, and detoxification problems.

He says this is why:

… the standard treatment protocol (consisting of 30 days antibiotic therapy) doesn’t offer the cure for most sufferers. You can’t just blow up bugs. Detoxification, hormone balancing, heavy metal removal and ramping up immune function are equally important.

Criticism of “chronic Lyme disease”

Horowitz is one of the self-styled Lyme literate medical doctors (LLMDs), mavericks who have built a whole industry around diagnosing and treating something not recognized by mainstream medical science. A 2011 article in The Lancet exposed LLMDs for scientific misconduct, fraud, disciplinary actions, use of unvalidated laboratory tests, and other unethical activities. It also showed how activists have diverted attention away from evidence-based medicine and it expressed concern that their activities will endanger the public’s health unless responsible parties firmly stand up for an evidence-based approach.

There is no better example of a relentless attack on evidence-based biomedical research and the integrity of outstanding scientists than that associated with the treatment of a poorly defined condition called “chronic Lyme disease.” Here, a scientifically naive general population, the lay press, and legislators, who in most instances are unable to evaluate and judge scientific evidence properly, have been misled by patient advocate groups to believe that extended antibiotic therapy is the best and only solution to this condition. This has resulted in the unprecedented intrusion of government and the legal systems into the practice of medicine and scientific research. Because there is no clinical evidence that this condition is due to a persistent infection, advocating extended antibiotic therapy is not justified and has been shown to be harmful and of no benefit.

Lyme disease is a relatively well-described infectious disease with multisystem manifestations. Because of confusion over conflicting reports, anxiety related to vulnerability to disease, and sensationalized and inaccurate lay media coverage, a new syndrome, “chronic Lyme disease,” has become established. Chronic Lyme disease is the most recent in a continuing series of “medically unexplained symptoms” syndromes. These syndromes, such as fibromyalgia, chronic fatigue syndrome, and multiple chemical sensitivity, meet the need for a societally and morally acceptable explanation for ill-defined symptoms in the absence of objective physical and laboratory findings. We describe factors involved in the psychopathogenesis of chronic Lyme disease and focus on the confusion and insecurity these patients feel, which gives rise to an inability to adequately formulate and articulate their health concerns and to deal adequately with their medical needs, a state of disorganization termed aporia.

That article is worth reading in its entirely; the link is to the full text. It provides a lot of insight into how the CLD diagnosis evolved, why patients with medically unexplained symptoms welcomed it, how a science-based multidisciplinary approach might more effectively help these sufferers, and why most can be expected to reject that approach in favor of the simplistic understandings and false promises of the “LLMD” approach.

A 2007 article in The New England Journal of Medicine, “A Critical Appraisal of ‘Chronic Lyme Disease”, concluded that CLD was a misnomer, that it is only the latest in a series of many labels that have attempted to attribute medically unexplained symptoms to infections, and that antibiotic treatment is not warranted. The CDC agrees that so-called Post-Treatment Lyme Disease Syndrome should not be treated with long-term antibiotics.

Testing for Lyme

Cohen recommends testing for Lyme disease with IgM and IgG Western blot tests, and she specifically recommends IgeneX lab in California, a questionable lab that has been investigated because it reports positive results for Lyme disease that can’t be confirmed by other labs.

…you should only have an immunoblot (such as an FDA-approved Western Blot or striped blot) test done if your blood has already been tested and found reactive with an EIA or IFA.

Second, the IgM Western Blot test result is only meaningful during the first 4 weeks of illness. If you have been infected for longer than 4-6 weeks and the IgG Western Blot is still negative, it is highly likely that the IgM result is incorrect (e.g., a false positive). This does not mean that you are not ill, but it does suggest that the cause of illness is something other than the Lyme disease bacterium.

Who is Cohen?

Suzy Cohen bills herself as “America’s Pharmacist”. She has a syndicated column and has written several books. She is “passionate about natural medicine” and promotes a number of nonsensical treatments, from Bach flower remedies to coffee enemas to acupuncture for tinnitus. An example of her spurious reasoning:

Antibiotics are actually derived from mold/fungus so it’s recommended that you avoid antibiotics if you have any fungal infection or various immune system disorders.

You are known by the company you keep. The usual suspects believe in CLD, including Joseph Mercola, Mike Adams, and Dr. Oz. Dr. Oz is a very agreeable man. He agrees with promoters of psychic surgery. He agrees with every new purveyor of snake oil who comes down the pike, with every new miracle solution for effortless weight loss. And predictably, he agrees with Cohen. He assumes Chronic Lyme Disease exists and is “either a chronic condition or an autoimmune response” or both. He quotes a scientist who says there is no scientific evidence for CLD; but he chooses to disregard him and believe Horowitz instead. Oz supports certain supplements to strengthen the body’s ability to repair itself: vitamin B12, coenzyme Q10, chromium, folate, omega-3 fatty acids, and herbs such as Rhodiola rosea.

There is even a Hollywood movie and proposed legislation targeting the evil establishment that is allegedly suppressing these new discoveries.

Conclusion

The belief that chronic Lyme disease exists is not supported by the evidence. It is a disservice to patients with unexplained symptoms to paste that label on them and treat them with potentially harmful long-term antibiotics. They are suffering, and they deserve our compassion and the best that science-based medicine has to offer, not bogus treatments by charlatans or well-meaning but misguided LLMDs.

On March 17th, Toonami celebrated the programming block's return by airing Evangelion 1.11. It pulled 959,000 viewers and Toonami responded to a Tumblr question as to whether they were satisfied with Eva with "We were. It was a solid showing that gives us something to build off of as we think about what our NEXT movie might be…" Now, the time has come for the follow-up.

Toonami will be closing out the summer with an August 31st airing of 2.22.

Toonami remarked

“Anonymous Asked: Are you guys gonna have another “month of movies” like the “Month of Miyazaki”?

Hmm maybe at some point! But since you asked about movies, now is as good a time as any to announce our NEXT MOVIE- on August 31st, we’re proud to announce that we’ll be airing NEON GENESIS EVANGELION 2.22, YOU CAN [NOT] ADVANCE, along with a special little goodie that you’ll have to wait to find out about! How ‘bout THEM apples??

On August 17th, Eureka 7 will be going away, never to return. We’ll be sorry to see it go. Replacing it will be STAR WARS: THE CLONE WARS, which we’re very happy about because we always felt it was a Toonami show. FYI: We’ll be skipping some of the non-continuity (read: Jar Jar) eps, but they’ll generally run in order. AMERICAN CARTOONS BELONG ON TOONAMI! xoxoxoxo”

what’s replacing Eureka 7?? Are you guys going to get “Eureka 7: AO” when it gets dubbed???

We’re of course looking at Eureka 7: AO.”

On the subjects of shows not picked up...

“Anonymous Asked: Viz reps on ANNCast have said you rejected Tiger and Bunny. Since they’ve gone on record about this, can you confirm or deny this? If so, please reconsider.

We haven’t “rejected” anything. We have two very successful Viz shows on the air at present, and until/unless one of them is removed from the block, we don’t have any availability for more. We’ll see what the future holds.”

Panty And Stocking (1 of 2):

“Anonymous Asked: So I was at Comic-Con and I approached one of the higher ups at the FUNimation booth and he said that when they brought Panty & Stocking to you guys, you rejected it. Considering that Adult Swim is privy to adult oriented shows and that AS was cool with airing Shin Chan when FUNimation brought it to you, why did you reject it?

At this time, we felt One Piece and Soul Eater were a better fit for the block.”

Panty And Stocking (2 of 2):

“jAsked: In regards to Panty And Stocking, I always felt it would be way more at home with Aqua Teen and Squidbillies since the comedy is the main focus of that show. Besides, it doesn’t really look like anime, so it would fit right in. What do you guys think? Toonami or [as] Comedy?

So there's this whole ethical and moral collapse on the part of the vendor. But this is nothing new. Vendors are always out for however they can make the fastest dollar out of the faddiest fad without any of the messy business of copyrights or permission. Fan convention vendors operate in a twilight world, halfway between the guy who sells balloons and glowsticks outside the baseball game and the flea market booth that sells puppies, knockoff handbags, and expired canned goods.

The freewheeling nature of convention dealers rooms is attractive; ideally it means a wide variety of merchandise both new and used, guaranteeing you'll find one-of-a-kind items and rare collectibles. It also means that people without ethics or responsibility will abuse the system at every opportunity.

We've dealt with bootleg anime videos for decades; before there were anime cons, there were comic-con dealers with tables full of VHS they'd copied at home and were now selling for $20 each. Their attitude was a fascinating combination of racism ("We're only ripping off the Japanese!") and a hard-scrabble, very American desire to take what's around you and monetize it, whether it's breeding puppies in the back yard or making folk art out of beer cans or making VHS bootlegs of "Iczer One".

When technology improved so did the bootleg vendors - from bootleg VHS straight to bootleg DVDs and bootleg CDs. You remember Son May CDs, that gray-market 'only in Taiwan' CD label that somehow found its way to the dealers room tables of every anime con? The acres of bootleg wall scrolls? Plenty of vendors were willing to put their ethics on hold for a chance to make money, and plenty of ignorant (or uncaring) anime fans were willing to shell out.

The internet and file-sharing has largely dealt a death blow to the bootleg video industry, but unethical fandom vendors continue to try to squeeze a dollar out of somebody else's work. The Artist Alleys are constantly dealing with plagiarism, with organized attempts to game the system and with fellows like the now-vanished "Shojo Jojo", whose artistic ability was to download other people's artwork, print it onto T-shirts, and sell it.

What this Anime Next vendor is doing with hug-pillows is I guess just an exciting new vision of unethical behavior. They claim their hug-pillows will no longer be available to the general public, and I invite fandom to keep an eye on these people. We've heard those kinds of claims before.

The other problem is that we have a convention that's ostensibly an anime convention, yet here in the vendor's room somebody is selling hug pillows with pictures of Superman on 'em. What's the matter, anime con vendor world, you can't make money off of Japanese animation merchandise any more? And yeah, that's what vendors are telling me, that they can't make money off Japanese animation merchandise.

Here's a news flash. Are you a Japanese toy company or are you licensing Japanese animation characters to toy companies? Then you probably aren't making any money off of Japanese animation. The days of unloading a panel truck full of plushies and wall scrolls onto your exhibit hall table and walking away with a fistful of cash are over. We had a recession. We have a fandom with bedrooms full of wallscrolls and plushies. We have an anime industry that has saturated the market with all the characters that can possibly inspire wallscrolls and plushies.

Does this mean that anime con dealers need to quit selling anime stuff? Enough with the DVDs, with the manga, with the cels, with the model kits, with the diecast toys, with the doujinshi, with the Revoltech figures, with the art books and the Roman Albums? Anime con dealers can't make money selling anime stuff to anime fans? That's the world we're in? I don't buy it. I don't believe anime con dealers rooms need to be filled with internet memes, funny pop-culture t-shirts, hilarious fandom joke buttons, or whatever else the slack-jawed, dead-eyed masses waste their money on, and I wish all that junk would go back to the State Fair midway it came from.

I don't believe anime cons need to sell tables to cosplay photography vendors who are unethical enough to sell body pillows featuring unauthorized American super-hero costumers. We can buy Superman junk anywhere; at the mall, at the thrift store, at the dollar store, at the Sears outlet. There's no shortage of superhero merchandise. That's not why people pay $60 to get in to your con, to buy Superman junk.

So we're dealing with unethical vendors, and we're dealing with an anime con that let them into the dealers room in the first place. Why not get some anime merchandise dealers at your anime con instead? Why are we pandering to the lowest common denominator? Why not at least make a token effort to distinguish our Japanese cartoon conventions from the Dragoncons, the Comic-Con Internationals, the Fan Expos of the world?

(and if anime con vendors can't make money selling anime stuff to anime fans, then by golly, I guess we won't have vendors rooms. We'll have a swap meet on Saturday afternoon instead, and all of us fans can sell each other the junk we bought from you in the first place, and we can spend the rest of the convention having fun instead of shopping. Fine with me.)

Yesterday, I wrote about an expert witness's report on Prenda Law (previously), the notorious porno copyright trolls (they send you letters accusing you of downloading porn and demand money on pain of being sued and forever having your name linked with embarrassing pornography). The witness said that he believed that Prenda -- and its principle, John Steele -- had been responsible for seeding and sharing the files they accused others of pirating.

After hearing about this, the administrators for The Pirate Bay dug through their logs and published a damning selection of log entries showing that many of the files that Steele and his firm accused others of pirating were uploaded by Steele himself, or someone with access to his home PC.

The Pirate Bay logs not only link Prenda to the sharing of their own files on BitTorrent, but also tie them directly to the Sharkmp4 user and the uploads of the actual torrent files.

The IP-address 75.72.88.156 was previously used by someone with access to John Steele’s GoDaddy account and was also used by Sharkmp4 to upload various torrents. Several of the other IP-addresses in the log resolve to the Mullvad VPN and are associated with Prenda-related comments on the previously mentioned anti-copyright troll blogs.

The logs provided by The Pirate Bay can be seen as the missing link in the evidence chain, undoubtedly linking Sharkmp4 to Prenda and John Steele. Needless to say, considering the stack of evidence above it’s not outrageous to conclude that the honeypot theory is viable.

While this is certainly not the first time that a copyright troll has been accused of operating a honeypot, the evidence compiled against Prenda and Steel is some of the most damning we’ve seen thus far.

Kenshiro of Fist of the North Star is doubling up Crunchyroll duties with his starring role in the super-deformed anime spin-off DD Fist of the North Star. The series starts streaming today at 5pm Pacific. More after the jump.

We had this interview scheduled with Sam Pinansky of the just-launched website AnimeSols, but then he went on ANNCast right before this recording and they asked all the stuff we originally were planning to ask. We then had to improvise for questions. THIS INTERVIEW IS THE RESULT. Visit www.animeworldorder.com for full show notes and supplemental links.

As we walked down the hallways of NERV Headquarters inside Evangelion World at the Fuji-Q Highland theme park in Japan, we saw a series of doors with peepholes installed in them. We noticed other folks looking in, so we did the same. The peepholes were clever views into rooms where NERV staff (Misato, Kaji, etc.) were “working” on various things. One door, though, seemed somewhat odd for the fact that the peephole what LOWER than normal. I bent over, curious, and looked into it:

What I saw inside was EXACTLY what you expected in an Evangelion theme park attraction.

Yup. It was there so you could look up Misato’s skirt.

Welcome to Japan.

Keeping “in theme” with the exciting entertainment this attraction was providing, we came across a changing room where Rei was getting into her pilot suit. Shannon sat there and waited for her.

Did I mention we were in Japan?

After navigating through Evangelion World, we came to the FINALE of the attraction…

This is interesting for a number of reasons.I didn't know AMD had been around since the 60's, I also didn't know they had been making chips since the 80's (I know first knew about them in the 90's), and I didn't know they'd been struggling since the early 2000's, since that was the AMD Athlon X2 days which was an excellent chip.

Now it seems no one is buying AMD since the "i" series is so superior to everything AMD is putting out, so much so that Intel has slowed down their R&D since they're so far ahead of AMD.

Aurich Lawson

In part one of this two-part series, we look at the evolution of AMD from a second-source supplier for companies using Intel processors towards CEO Hector Ruiz's ideal of a "premium" chipmaker that could sell to the likes of Dell and Intel.

On June 10, 2000, Advanced Micro Devices (AMD) wanted to party—and party big. The company’s CEO, Jerry Sanders, arranged to rent out the entire San Jose Arena (now called the HP Pavilion) and then paid big bucks to bring in Faith Hill and Tim McGraw, the husband-and-wife country music superstars.

Employees “could bring anybody, your wife, your kids, your friends—it was big doings. There were celebrations, gifts and awards,” recalled Fran Barton, who served as AMD’s chief financial officer from 1998 to 2001. The boss even got in on the fun. “[Sanders] was on a high wire, he did a unicycle ride. It was totally Hollywood. He could really put on a show when he wanted to put on a show.”